A Cheat Sheet for Using the Dewey Decimal System

My favorite dorky librarian joke is that I was absent the day they taught the Dewey Decimal System in library school. This is 100% true. As part of my Masters in Library and Information Science, I had to take a class in cataloging. It covered all the different systems used in academic and public libraries, plus all the methodologies behind cataloging. Exactly one class period was dedicated to learning the Dewey Decimal System, and I had the flu that week.

So it’s not an impossible system to learn. Pretty much everything I know about Dewey was learned on the job and through osmosis as a lifelong library user and second generation librarian.

And now I live the Dewey Decimal system; naming the number for random subjects is my best party trick. I think it’s beautiful and idiosyncratic and a soothing constant of the universe. I love that animals are in the 500s (Natural Sciences), but farm animals and pets are in the 600s (Technology). I love that everyone thinks Dewey is just for nonfiction, but it’s actually for all books, period. There are just so many fiction books that it makes no sense to squeeze them into their rightful place in the 800s (I also love blowing a second- or third-graders mind with this fact). I should have a “WWDD?” sticker on my car.

Photo by Jackie Reeve.

I don’t expect kids in the 21st century to memorize the 10 main categories like we all had to do growing up. But I do hope they learn their favorite sections. It tells me more when a child can show a classmate that the dog books are 636.7 than if they can recite that the 000s are “General Information.”

And I can tell you, there is a shortlist of subjects (out of thousands of possibilities) that kids ask me for Every. Single. Day. Most of them are in the 500s, 600s, and 700s. They occasionally stray from the list, but it’s a pretty universal truth of childhood nonfiction reading that they will ask for something on this shortlist. If your child has a favorite, or if you ever need to make a library trip as quick and painless as possible, this is the list to save. Here’s a PDF version, too.

ooos (General Information) to 200s (Religion)

031: World record books

292: Greek and Roman mythology

300s (Social Sciences) to 400s (Language)

350s: Military (not including war or history, those are down in the 900s)

398.2: Fairy Tales (398 is folklore in general, including nursery rhymes). Fun fact: fairy tales are fictional, but they are kept in the 300s basically because they represent, and teach us about, the cultures they come from. You probably won’t find the Disneyfied versions here.

One Response to A Cheat Sheet for Using the Dewey Decimal System

I have misplaced a sheet one of my great-grandmothers had for teaching the Dewey Decimal System from “self-awareness (general and psychology) to outer-awareness (fiction).” If you ever come across such a chart, please email it to me. Thank you. Sincerely, Rosalind K. Mixson ~ grandmanannah1957@gmail.com

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